Is Spending More On Ads The Effective Way to Increase Results?

We are fairly new to AdWords and Online marketing and are not seeing the results we expected for the effort we have put into our campaigns. We developed a nice site, carry a great selections of products and have some of the best prices in the US for what we offer. Nevertheless, we are not seeing a lot of traffic.

We have a number of campaigns running but there a fewer impressions than we expected and even few clicks. Our first thought is to increase our bid prices for key words. However, we have some reservations as we don't want to spend a lot of money without seeing some tangible results (i.e., conversions). How do we balance our spend for Ads to ensure we are not just throwing money away? Our first inclination is to throw more money into this, but does that make sense. We don't t mind spending if it's going to net us more in profits than outlay. It all seems so intrinsically simple: spend more to make more. Is that really a wise way to look at this?

Re: Is Spending More On Ads The Effective Way to Increase Results?

Hi Chuck, this is a great question and I wish more advertisers would approach their spend in the manner you're doing here.

First and foremost, make sure you hang on to that rule that if your advertising spend isn't making you a profit then you should stop spending. I see far too many comments here from people that have spend $X per month for years without a return. If you've got a perfect set up and you're not making a profit, stop wasting your money.

The trick is, of course, knowing when you've got everything perfect; are you not making a profit because it's not posssible in your market or is it because your Account isn't set up ideally? It's almost impossible to give advice without knowing more about yorur business, but here are some things to consider:

Are you giving the Account enough time to convert? Some products convert mostly on the day of the first click, others may take days, weeks or even months to convert. Make sure you're not making decisions based upon a short time period that may not reflect long term gains.

Are you being too focused? Normally the advice here is to make sure your advertising is very tightly focused to your product/service but it is possible to be too focused. Have you considered relaxing your targeting area and/or your Keyword match types?

Do you have one or more products that convert well and others that don't? Don't fall into the trap of running an Account that advertises all your products even though only a handful convert well. Don't be afraid to pause Keywords or Groups that don't perform and to say simply "That product doesn't sell well via AdWords". Make sure, however, that you give enough time and use enough data to make this decision, including Assisted conversions.

Advertise the right products. It's surprisingly common to find advertisers promoting their worst selling products on the basis that they want to improve sales. Make sure you're promoting your most popular products, those with a proven sales record. If something sells well organically, it'll usually sell even better with targeted advertising.

Analyse your visitors. Use Google Analytics to look at how visitors move through your site. Are the majority "bouncing" from their landing page - meaning your site isn't what they wanted and you may need to revise your Keywords and/or Ads. Are a lot of people putting items in their basket but not completing the sale, perhaps indicating your shipping costs are too high or your payment options too limited.

Make sure you don't deliver good customers to a bad shop. AdWords only delivers people to you "door", what happens after that is up to you. Amazingly, I've seen advertisers who've spent money over months sending visitors to a site where the checkout process was actually broken, resulting in an error. Make sure your site is friendly, easy to navigate and doesn't put form over function. Try to visit your own site as a stranger and buy a random product.

At the end of the day, consider the real possibility that AdWords won't work for you. AdWords is a great tool that can produce amazing results for most companies but it would be foolish to say it will work for all. It is vital that you don't carry on spending money needlessly but you have to make that decision when you're really sure there's nothing else you can do to make things better.